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A Lawman, Polite and Ready to Shoot

Scenes from “Justified”: From left, Timothy Olyphant as a deputy United States marshal at the center of this new series; Joelle Carter; and Erica Tazel.Credit
Prashant Gupta/FX; Prashant Gupta/FX; Jeffrey Neira/FX

THERE are a few ways to discern that Raylan Givens, the character at the center of the FX series “Justified” is an Elmore Leonard creation. Although he is a deputy United States marshal in a very contemporary milieu, he wears a big old cowboy hat, and his pistol, which he carries in a side holster, comes out only when he gets down to business. Regardless of the circumstance, he doesn’t spend a lot of time waving it around, but when it does reveal itself in a flash, the bodies tend to fall around him. Oh, and one other thing: As played by Timothy Olyphant, the steely gaze of a lawman with mortal tendencies is replaced with a courtly manner and a twinkle of mirth in his eye. In fact just about everybody in “Justified” displays very good manners while doing some very ill-mannered things.

The series, which will have its premiere on FX on Tuesday, grew out of an Elmore Leonard short story, “Fire in the Hole” and situates Givens in Kentucky, where he grew up and vowed never to return.

“Justified” is hardly the first attempt to render the dialogue of Mr. Leonard, the author of dozens of novels over the last half-century, suitable for the small screen. But while some of the films made from his novels — “Out of Sight,” “Get Shorty” and “Jackie Brown” — have found critical and commercial success, the medium of television has not always been so kind to the Leonard oeuvre. Network efforts like “Karen Cisco’ and “Maximum Bob” tanked, in part because Mr. Leonard’s characters tend to do and say things that don’t fly with network standards. On FX, thanks to basic cable’s less restrictive policies, the people in “Justified” cuss and sleep around, the former stripper really does have a heart of gold, and the neo-Nazi is charming and loquacious.

Part of the reason “Justified” is able to skate away from the usual tics of television is that the series doesn’t take place in some gritty version of New York, or explore the throbbing night scene of Miami or the dark side of Los Angeles. The setting in Kentucky, where the lawman and the suspect might have once mined coal together, democratizes the landscape on both sides of the law.

Mr. Leonard, 84, won a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award last year for a literary career that has included “52 Pickup,” Freaky Deaky” and “Be Cool.” He’s never been shy about speaking up when he thought his work was mangled, but he’s clearly happy with “Justified.”

“I don’t write for laughs, but I have fun writing, and I think the people doing ‘Justified’ are doing the same thing,” he said. “There is a freedom from the kinds of formulas that networks usually use, and the characters are complicated. They aren’t just one thing.”

Raylan Givens, like most of Mr. Leonard’s characters, contain multitudes, good and ill, sweet and sour, criminal and not. He is more than happy to share a bit of moonshine with a boyhood friend turned suspect before taking him out. Mr. Olyphant played a reluctant sheriff in “Deadwood,” but in “Justified” he relishes the job, especially the part about dispatching someone after giving him fair warning. There are notes of laconic characters played by Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in his performance, although he’s a little more fun to be around.

“He is very laid back and takes his time, but when he says something, he means it,” Mr. Leonard said. “He says, ‘If you take another step, I will shoot you,’ and then he takes another step and Givens does.”

Graham Yost, an executive producer of “Justitifed,” handed out W.W.E.D. — What Would Elmore Do? — bracelets to his crew of writers, and the verisimilitude that they aim for in this modern-day western is about Mr. Leonard’s world.

“It’s big and small things,” Mr. Yost said. “Elmore’s characters drink like crazy, and so do ours. Elmore said he had never written a bad guy he didn’t like, and we try to stay true to that.”

“Elmore has been out to the writer’s room, and it was great for all of us,” he added. “You have to remember to never forget the sense of humor, to create people that are interesting and dynamic, and to be true to what is going to happen.” (Mr. Leonard is an executive producer of the series and showed up earlier this year at the Television Critics Association media tour to promote it.)

Mr. Olyphant is not surprised to be finding himself wearing a badge again, but says he thinks this one is pinned on a pretty interesting character, one who’s back in his hometown after a bloody confrontation with a fugitive in Miami made the suits there nervous.

“Raylan is a guy who can’t walk through someone’s door without permission but is more than willing to kill once he does,” he said. “I am constantly going through the books to make sure we are hitting all those notes. My experience with reading Elmore is that I can’t go into the library and open any of his books to a random page and not find something that just cracks me up.”

There are shadows that overhang Mr. Olyphant’s character, including a father who has done more than a few bids in prison, a wife who walked away from him for another guy, both of whom who are now back in his life since his return to Kentucky. And there is always a suggestion that under a deadly calm veneer lies a real need to see that blood is extracted for various sins. As his ex-wife says at the end of the pilot, “You’re the angriest man I have ever met,” a trait shared by his character in “Deadwood,” David Milch’s HBO western.

For FX “Justified” features another in a series of conflicted heroes, or sometimes, antiheroes. With “Damages,” Rescue Me,” “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck” FX has come up with a menu of characters we root both for and against, as dramatic circumstance requires.

Zack Van Amburg, co-president for programming with Jamie Erlicht at Sony Pictures Television, which also produces “Rescue Me,” said “Justified” was an attempt to take the “anti” out of hero and still render a lead character that has texture.

“When I read ‘Fire in the Hole,’ it was the most captivating story I had read in a long time,” he said. “With this show it begins with Elmore. As Graham said when we got started, we are trying to capture not just a story, but life, through an Elmore Leonard prism.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 14, 2010, on page AR19 of the New York edition with the headline: A Lawman, Polite and Ready to Shoot. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe